Homeboy: The myth of festive stress

Doug Pugh

Saturday

Jan 6, 2018 at 4:04 PM

I read an article several weeks ago about how a group of researchers, apparently with nothing better to do, decided it was time to come up with a new health epidemic so they could tell everyone about how terrible and unavoidable it was, and how it was sure to ruin everyone’s holiday season entirely.

The sickness is known as “festive stress” and is caused by all the frantic mayhem we supposedly experience each year during the weeks leading up to Christmas. Among other useless tidbits of information, they discovered that most Americans begin to feel the initial bursts of stress around Dec. 13, then the pressure grows from mild to severe on Dec. 18, before peaking and becoming nearly unbearable, on average, at 2:05 p.m. on Christmas Day.

I’m not sure which Americans were involved in this study, but I sure feel sorry for the Ebenezer Scrooges used as guinea pigs. On Dec. 13 this year, I first noticed there was hardly anything of any importance on my calendar for the remainder of the year, took a huge sigh of relief, and started concentrating almost all of my efforts on getting as much free food and booze as possible at various holiday parties. On Dec. 18, I decided not to go to the office for the next 10 days, choosing instead to lie around watching Bobby Flay make fruitcake on the Food Network. At 2:05 on Christmas Day, I wasn’t even out of bed yet. If things such as snow globes, sugar cookies and Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer get people’s blood boiling, I suggest they chill out with a couple of bottles of fortified eggnog. For me, Christmas is the least stressful time of the year. The week beginning Jan. 2 is by far the worst.

When I dragged myself into the office on Tuesday, I realized it had been so long since I’d done anything productive that I couldn’t even remember the password to log on to my computer. It had been so long since I’d been away from the fireplace that I hadn’t realized that Boone County had suddenly been transformed into Siberia and I had to drive my car the full 100 yards to the courthouse to avoid hypothermia and exhaustion. I found myself wishing that New Year’s Eve had never ended, and in all honesty, as I struggled with my clouded mind, wasn’t entirely sure it hadn’t.

If the researchers had studied me, it would be clear that there is an entirely different and opposite strain of holiday mental illness known as “festive apathy and utter worthlessness.” I think this is precisely why so many of us feel compelled to make New Year’s resolutions. For me, it’s to put away the lights and decorations without tangling them into an impossible mess more, which is a million times more stressful than opening a bottle of wine on Christmas Eve. New Year’s resolutions give the slothful a sense of hope. We know there is zero chance we will follow through on them, but to merely ignore setting lofty goals would be an even more overt admission of outright apathy. A New Year’s resolution is a nod to our imperfections, but a vow that, hey by golly, we shall persevere.

After all, if I can’t motivate myself to improve my body and mind, and make the world a better place, am I not violating the holiday spirit I embraced with such fervor by lying on the sofa watching Netflix most of December?

Well, maybe not. The other day I found myself making a list, and checking it twice, of possible resolutions for 2018. It included the highly unlikely: cleaning out the gutters; being kinder to the dog; driving the speed limit in my neighborhood. It included the absurd: running a half-marathon and running for Congress. It even included the patently impossible old mainstays: losing weight; quitting smoking; being motivated to accomplish a single thing during the holidays.

It is one thing to lie to others, but it's intrinsic evil to lie to one’s self. If I can relax just a little bit more during next year’s bout with “festive stress," maybe I’ll have some legitimate time for resolutions for 2019. For now, I’m just going to go outside, shiver away my holiday doldrums, and chill.

Homeboy, aka Columbia attorney Doug Pugh, is the father of two daughters. Beyond that, it gets weird. He’s a Kewpie married to a Bruin, a graduate of both MU’s journalism and law schools and is working to become domesticated for the sake of his wife and the girls.

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